Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic Thinks Kurt Cobain ‘Would Have Been a Great Monk’

It's been over two decades since Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain took his own life, but fans are just as interested in the grunge enigma as they were in 1994. In a new interview with Spin, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic spoke of his deceased bandmate, claiming Cobain could have gone on to be a great artist or even a monk.

The life and death of Kurt Cobain remains a major focus in rock, as evidenced by the acclaimed and Emmy-nominated 2015 documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. Nirvana were at the peak of their fame when Cobain passed away, forever leaving the legendary band's future a mystery. However, Krist Novoselic has a few theories on how Cobain's life and Nirvana's career could have played out.

“You never know, maybe we would suck," says Novoselic. "Look at Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters are on top of the world. So he kept the flag going for rock and roll, he’s just like the leading act in the world. It’s just hard to speculate. I wish Kurt had lived, and was a monk somewhere. He would have been a great monk, he could have been a great painter, he could have been a great sculptor. He was such a talented artist, that he could have done whatever he wanted to do, and he didn’t have to do what he did.”

Krist also spoke about Cobain's first suicide attempt in Rome, along with his actual death, “He should have never done that, he should have never done that, what he did. I don’t know, I mean it happens all the time, it happens every day. I think he was out of his mind on heroin. I remember seeing him on those last days, and he was loaded, so he wasn’t thinking clearly when he did that. And after Rome, he tried to kill himself in Rome, and he was really weird after that. He was quiet, he should have never done that, but he did it, and it’s terrible, people do it. I was heartbroken when he did that.”